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Beavers stay hot, shut out Wildcats 1-0

Beaverton moves into third place with just tonight's 2011 Metro finale left to be played

BEAVERTON - The Beaverton boys soccer team is loaded with seniors, 11 of them who were on the roster for the team's run to the Class 6A state championship game last year.

But on Oct. 20, it was sophomore forward Ian Coleman who stepped forward and scored the lone goal in his team's 1-0 win over Westview at Beaverton High School. In the process, the Beavers - who also beat Aloha 3-0 on Monday - improved to 5-3-1 in league play (9-3-1 overall) and took sole possession of third place.

'We're not at the top where we'd like to be, but we're looking to try to get into second,' said Coleman, who scored midway through the second half on a header. 'I think we're finally getting a rhythm together and I think we can build on this and get more wins.'

'Coming in it was about development. That was our only goal,' said senior defender Connor Frische. 'We wanted to win too, but we kind of got two birds with one stone.'

Westview - which lost again to Sunset by a 2-1 margin on Monday - saw its five-game winning streak snapped and moved to 6-2-1 and second place in league (10-2-1 overall).

'We just have to be consistent throughout the game,' said Westview senior Andrew Knauer. 'We played the second half way better than the first. We've just got to bring the second half to the first every game.'

'I feel the first half we came out pretty flat and that was it,' said sophomore midfielder Hunter Pinson. 'They play possession a lot so we had to play high pressure and we weren't very good at that.'

While there was just one goal scored in the contest, there were a number of dangerous chances for each team along the way.

Among those missed chances were:

n Beaverton's Mario Ramirez missed a hard shot to the left of the Wildcat goal 10 minutes into the first half.

n Two minutes later, Westview's Jordan Van Baest made a run down the left sideline, then crossed the ball to Jaime Velasco for a hard shot stopped by Beaver keeper Brandon Chatham.

n Ramirez struck a 28-yard free kick toward the Cats' goal from the left side that forced keeper Yoji Ishizuka to make a diving save with 14:50 remaining before halftime.

n And Beaverton's Hunter Krueger had a goal waived off due to an offside call with 1:30 left in the opening half to keep the score at 0-0.

The first 18 minutes of the second half were largely fruitless for each team, but Coleman stepped up to make sure this game didn't end in a tie. Ramirez started the scoring play with a free kick from 18 yards out of goal on the right side of the Wildcat penalty box. His kick sailed into a crowd of players at the far post where Coleman headed it, Ishizuka knocked it away, and Coleman headed it again to score at the left post with 21:45 left to play.

'It was a good ball,' Coleman said. 'I got lucky and got my head on it, (then) it just came back to me in the air, right to my head, so I was like 'Oh. That's lucky.' It was a big one.'

The Wildcats had one more good chance to tie the score and it came three minutes after Coleman's goal. Westview junior Willy Salgado-Garcia made a strong run up the right seam while chased by Beaverton senior defender Arturo Vargas. Salgado-Garcia struck the ball solidly just 10 yards out of goal, but Vargas deflected the ball into outside of the net and the Beavers hung on to win 1-0.

'We know they have some strong forwards,' Frische said. 'We knew that if we let them get at us, they would punish us, so defensively, it was stay on their back and don't let them turn. It seemed to work pretty well.'

The Wildcats, stung by their back-to-back losses, left determined to come back strong.

'We just have to take the feeling we have right now - it's terrible, I don't even know how to describe it - and not repeat it,' Knauer said.

To see a complete photo gallery from this game, please go to www.milesvance.exposuremanager.com.